The Truth About Muscle Loss When Dieting

People worry about the weirdest and most irrelevant things when dieting. When you’re dieting, your #1 goal is to lose weight (fat specifically), nothing more, nothing less. You should only be worried about how you’re going to create a calorie deficit for the day.

However minds begin to wonder, goals get distorted, and people begin coming up with these crazy “what if” scenarios.

“What if I eat less and my metabolism slows down?” – Nothing to worry about, covered that here.

“What if I lose weight but regain it all back?” – Then you’re not a very long-term minded person, are you?

“What if I go on a diet, become insanely sexy, and end up causing head-turning car collisions which in turn gets me arrested because of said sexiness and I get a life sentence in a maximum security prison?” – Completely legitimate concern, but that’s just a risk you have to be willing to take.

“What if I lose all my hard-earned muscle while dieting?” – Read the rest of the article.

Muscle loss while dieting is nothing to worry about

I completely understand people’s fear of losing muscle while dieting but the truth is that it’s nothing to worry about.

You see, muscle loss is transient. It’s not permanent.

So even if you do somehow manage to lose 5 pounds of muscle while dieting, whether it’s due to an illness, extremely low protein intake or lack of resistance training…you’re guaranteed regain that loss once you begin eating normal and resume resistance training.

This is all thanks to muscle memory, which unlike muscle confusion, is a real thing.

i am now 27 y.o, had been doing weight trainings quite frequently for the passed 2 years and started to train consistently 4 days + 2-3 cardio sessions/week since August; but i did went for travelling for 2 weeks twice during the period;

my daily protein intake is around 1.2-1.5g/lbs and carbs around 100-120g daily, fat would be less than 50/day.

I just did 90 days of the strict keto diet with only a 6 hour eating window each day, fasting during all other hours. The only exercise I was doing was walking 5 to 7 miles per day. I lost a total of 48lbs, but over 20 of that was lean muscle mass. (Dexa body scan before and after diet) I did 200 grams of protein a day, mostly whey protein powder, eggs, sardines, whole chicken and steak. I lost 28 lbs of fat, but am shocked at the amount of lean muscle mass also lost. Total calorie intake was about 1800 – 2000 per day, but I felt amazing. Brain fog was gone and I went down 2 pant sizes. I never felt like I was starving myself and felt like I could keep going with this keto lifestyle. I had plenty of energy and slept better than ever.

Yesterday, after reviewing my scan results, my doctor told me to go off Keto and resume a normal diet due to concerns about the lean muscle loss. I ate one bowl of milk and Life cereal and a small slice of cheese pizza for dinner and hours later thought I was going to die. It was a long, miserable night. I bloated up like a cow eating too much raw alfalfa. Prior to keto, Life cereal and pizza were several times a week staples. What is up with this? Is 20 lbs of muscle loss really that big of a deal? My doctor is worried I did metabolic damage.

But 20 lbs in 90 days? A little bit would not have surprised me. But consuming 200+ grams of protein a day was supposed to be a protection from massive lean muscle loss, right? Or is resistance training absolutely necessary?

Hey Keith,
I did a crash dieting and lost a lot of weight mostly fat and I did only cardio and no resistance training,
Right now my body is too loose ,is it possible to fix it if I loose fat correctly this time?

I have lost a total of 123 lbs with about 80 more to go (I’m playing it by ear) following a paleo/keto diet. Over the last 3.5 months I lost 6% body fat and was thrilled until I calculated and discovered I had actually lost 3 lbs of lean mass. Is this something to be worried about? I could not work out two of those months because of an injury.

Finally someone said it! Very refreshing. Stick with weight loss goal, do as much exercise as you can and/or want to and don’t detour. Worry about ‘muscle sculpting’ or whatever later. Just remain focused on initial goal. This type of thinking could be applied into several aspects of life too. Great article, thanks 😉